The great importance of parallel
construction in presenting ideas
By Jose A. Carillo
Apart from the usefulness of the information or the power of the ideas being presented, what distinguishes good writing from insipid, so-so writing is parallelism in grammar along with symmetry in sentence construction. Parallelism and symmetry are actually mutually reinforcing attributes of exposition; by emphasizing the likeness or similarity between two or more ideas at both the sentence and paragraph levels, they promote clarity of expression and make the language more forceful and readable.
But precisely how do we achieve parallelism and symmetry in our own writing?
To shed some light to this question, I wrote a four-part essay, “Presenting ideas in parallel,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2006. Part I took up the basic rule for parallel construction: never mix grammatical forms when presenting similar or related ideas. Part II discussed another very important parallel construction rule: a parallel structure that begins with a clause should sustain that pattern all the way. Part III presented specific applications of the two parallelism rules taken up in Parts I and II. Finally, Part IV demonstrated how to achieve structural balance for sentences by using parallel structure for adjectives and adverbs as well as for two or more grammatical elements serving as complements.
That four-part essay now forms part of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (Manila Times Publishing, © 2010, 486 pages). Having seen not just a few violations (and apparent misunderstanding) of the parallelism rule in media on several occasions, however, I decided to post all parts of the essay in full in this blogspot. I am confident that by taking to heart that essay’s prescriptions for achieving parallelism, Forum members and friends (and the occasional media writers who drop by at the Forum) will see a dramatic improvement in both their written and spoken English.
Part I – Presenting ideas in parallel
Parallel construction is one of our most powerful tools for organizing and presenting ideas. It cannot be overemphasized that making our sentences grammatically and semantically correct is simply not enough. We should also ensure that each of their grammatical structures that are alike in function follows the same pattern. In fact, observance of this basic stylistic rule very often spells the difference between good and bad writing.
To give us a better idea of the power of parallel construction, let us first examine the following simple sentence: “Alberto likes reading, jogging, and to play computer games.”
We will find that it is structurally disjointed and does not read well because not all of its serial elements follow the same pattern. Although the first two elements, “reading” and “jogging,” are in parallel because both are gerunds (“-ing” noun forms), the third, “to play computer games,” ruins the parallelism because it is in the infinitive form (“to” + the verb stem).
One quick way to fix this structural problem is to put the third element also in gerund form, “playing computer games,” so that the sentence reads as follows: “Alberto likes reading, jogging, and playing computer games.” It is now grammatical balanced and no longer sounds stilted.
Another way for the original sentence to achieve parallelism is to make all three of its serial elements take the infinitive form: “Alberto likes to read, to jog, and to play computer games.” This sentence, of course, can be streamlined even further by using “to” only once right before the first of the all-infinitive parallel elements: “Alberto likes to read, jog, and play computer games.”
In actual practice, we have to put in parallel not only single words or short phrases but much more complicated grammatical structures such as extended phrases and clauses as well as long serial lists. However, the basic rule for parallel construction remains the same: never mix grammatical forms. We have to choose the most appropriate form for the similar or related ideas, then stick to the same pattern all the way.
Consider the following sentence with three extended elements that are not all in parallel:
“The chief executive decided to terminate the advertising manager because he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time, approved the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors, and his relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies were very bad.”
The first subordinate clause, “he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time,” is in parallel with the second subordinate clause, “(he) approved the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors,” because both of them are active verb forms using “he” (the advertising manager) as the subject. However, the third subordinate clause, “his human relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies were very poor,” disrupts the parallelism because it is in the passive verb form and takes for its subject not “he” but another noun form, “his relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies.”
See how much better the sentence reads when the third element is modified so it becomes parallel with the first two:
“The chief executive decided to terminate the advertising manager because he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time, allowed the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors, and related very badly with both his staff and the advertising agencies.”
Note that the three elements are now all active-voice verb phrases—“rarely managed…”, “allowed the publication…”, and “related very badly…”—that are perfectly parallel in form.
We will go deeper into the various ways of achieving parallelism in Part II of this essay.
Part II – Presenting ideas in parallel
As emphasized in Part I of this essay, the basic rule for parallel construction is to never mix grammatical forms when presenting similar or related ideas. A sentence that presents two or more serial elements should stick to the same pattern all throughout—all noun forms, all gerund forms, all infinitive forms, or all verb forms as the case may be. When serial elements all take the same form, ideas come across much more clearly and cohesively.
At this point, we will discuss another very important parallel construction rule: A parallel structure that begins with a clause should sustain that pattern all the way. Recall now that a clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate (and can thus function as a sentence in its own right, as in “we should obey the law”), as opposed to a phrase, which is a group of words that doesn’t have them (and thus can’t function as a sentence by itself, as in “to obey the law” or “obeying the law”). When the sentence doesn’t sustain the clause pattern, or when any of the clauses shifts from the active to the passive voice or the other way around, the parallelism falls apart. The result is a disjointed sentence that doesn’t read well.
Take this sentence that contains three serial grammatical elements:
“The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, that they should always do their assigned homework, and to submit their term papers on time.”
The parallelism of this sentence breaks down because while the first two elements—“they should aim for perfect attendance” and “they should always do their assigned homework”—are both clauses, the third element—“to submit their term papers on time”—is not a clause but an infinitive phrase.
We need to make this third element also a clause—“they should submit their term papers on time”—so the sentence can become perfectly parallel and more readable:
“The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, that they should do their assigned homework regularly, and that they should submit their term papers on time.”
Of course, a more concise but less emphatic way to construct this serial-clause sentence is to use the imperative “that they should” only once before the first clause:
“The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, do their assigned homework regularly, and submit their term papers on time.”
(Be forewarned, though, that such streamlining can obscure the meaning in more complicated constructions.)
The parallel structure of a sentence with serial clauses can also be ruined when any of the clauses takes a different voice, say the passive from active:
“The president anticipated that majority of the lower house would welcome the planned Charter change, that most of the senators would fiercely oppose it, and that a vicious demolition job would be mounted against it by her political detractors.”
Here, the first two clauses—“majority of the lower house would welcome the planned charter change” and “most of the senators would fiercely oppose it”—are in the active voice, but the third clause—“a vicious demolition job would be mounted against it by her political detractors”—is in the passive voice, thus disrupting the pattern.
To make the construction parallel all throughout, we should make the third clause also take the active voice—“her political detractors would mount a vicious demolition job against it.” This results in a more forceful sentence:
“The president anticipated that majority of the lower house would welcome the planned charter change, that most of the senators would fiercely oppose it, and that her political detractors would mount a vicious demolition job against it.”
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 29 and June 5, 2006 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
Next: Part III – Presenting ideas in parallel
June 26, 2023 (Monday)
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